Photo credit: Rachel Hadiashar, courtesy of Resonance Ensemble
Let’s get your week rolling with some exciting news!!
On June 13th, the New Ground Orchestra announced that it will perform a free concert at Penn State University on July 25, 2025 as part of the New Ground Orchestra Festival. This orchestra is an ensemble of professional women musicians from around the world, with the goal to “bring joy, helping hands, and create beautiful music.” Rebekah O’Brien will conduct the ensemble in a program featuring Beethoven, Felix Mendelssohn, and the East Coast premiere of Nancy Ives‘s “Immortal Beloved” with Denise Dillenbeck as featured soloist. Ives wrote the piece as a companion to Beethoven that features the women who could possibly be the recipient of Beethoven’s unaddressed letter (it anticipates the Beethoven bicentennial of 2027). The concerto incorporates references to nine women who could have been the “Immortal Beloved”: musical ciphers of their names, quotes and references to music connected to them, and references from Beethoven’s famous letter.
Below is the interview with composer Nancy Ives and violin soloist Denise Dillenback preceding the premiere by the Northwest Sinfonietta in January 2025. A recorded Zoom introduction to the world premiere can also be viewed on YouTube.
Patricia Wallinga, composer
On June 13th Patricia Wallinga‘s new chamber opera The Sisters premiered at Liberty City Arts, Philadelphia. The chamber opera “imagines a dreamlike conversation among four pioneering women poets across time.” The opera was inspired by Amy Lowell‘s poem “The Sisters.” Lowell was an American imagist poet whose work from the early 20th century experienced a revival during the 1970s feminist movement in the United States. Her poem explores her thoughts on Sappho, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Emily Dickinson; Wallinga’s libretto (written by the composer) adds Lowell’s own poetry to the three women in the original poem. The premiere was directed by Elise D’Avella, with musical direction by Ting Ting Wong, for four singers also features a string quintet.”
Dr. Samantha Ege, musicologist and pianist
On June 21 Dr. Samantha Ege—distinguished musicologist, pianist, and WPA board member —will perform Helen Hagan’s Piano Concerto in C Minor (1912) with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra at the New Haven Green as a part of the concert City of Floating Sounds. Dr. Ege is well known for her scholarship, advocacy, and performance of the musical works of historical black women composers, many of whom were almost completely unrecognized until she and other scholars like her championed their work. Below is Dr. Ege’s 2022 album Black Renaissance Women: Piano Music by Florence Price, Margaret Bonds, Nora Holt, Betty Jackson King and Helen Hagan, on which she performs Hagan’s concerto (in the two piano version).
On June 27th and 28th The Mental Health Suite by Autumn Maria Reed will receive its Australian premieres in Melbourne and Victorian as part of the Big Sing for a Big Cause concerts. The events are being presented by Australian Catholic University (ACU) in partnership with St Patrick’s Cathedral (Fri 27 June; also available via livestream) and Preston Market (Sat 28 June), and they will be led by conductor Dr Kathleen McGuire. The 2025 event project will benefit Australian non-profit health organizations Orygen (global youth mental health research, policy, education, and clinical care), and Headspace (young people’s mental health advocacy).
Below is a performance of The Mental Health Suite from the June 2024 showcase at the League of American Orchestras Conference in Houston, led by ROCO Artistic Partner and conductor Mei-Ann Chen.
Ashleigh Gordon, co-founder of Castle of our Skins, Photo by Ash Sealy
On June 5th, radio WGBH broadcast an interview with Ashleigh Gordon—co-founder, artistic executive director, and violist for Castle of our Skins. Castle of our Skins is an organization that recovers lost or forgotten music, particularly from American composers as well as creating and commissioning new art from contemporary Black musicians and artists. The organization has recently worked to promote the music of Undine Smith Moore, particularly her “Soweto No. 3 for piano and string quartet” in a collaborative project with Dr. Samantha Ege. It is a late work that Smith Moore wrote shortly before her death in 1987. She has been called the “Dean of Black Women Composers” in recent years, and yet her music is not well represented on recordings or in the concert hall. For the past twelve years, Castle of our Skins has worked to fill voids like these, especially for repertoire by Black American composers.
A four-session Intensive Webinar is being offered by the Boulanger Initiative, June 23-26 — “Where Are The Women.” Each session covers a different era of music history, through the present day, and will also examine why, in the 21st century, the classical music industry is still not inclusive of music by women. The course is led by BI’s Director of Learning & Engagement Kathryn Cruz and Research Manager Caiti Beth McKinney.